Tag: 2013

Categories
Vinyl

Vinyl love: No Joy “Wait to pleasure”

(Vinyl Love is a series of posts that quite simply lists, describes, and displays the pieces in my growing vinyl collection. You can bet that each record was given a spin during the drafting of each corresponding post.)

Artist: No Joy
Album Title: Wait to pleasure
Year released: 2013
Year reissued: 2023
Details: 10th anniversary, tan vinyl

The skinny: Here’s another great shoegaze album celebrating an anniversary this year and while this one is not quite widely recognized as a classic, it certainly is held as such in some circles. No Joy’s sophomore album “Wait to pleasure” was my introduction to the Montreal-based outfit led by Jasamine White-Gluz. They came up on my Facebook feed one day in 2013 from a group about shoegaze that I had forgotten that I’d joined. When I checked out the album and its mix of My Bloody Valentine and Sonic Youth crunch with Cocteau Twins and early Lush gauze-y goodness, this fan was sold. Ten years later, their Canadian label Hand Drawn Dracula* has reissued and repressed one hundred copies of the album to translucent tan vinyl to celebrate its anniversary. I pulled the trigger on Bandcamp as soon as I saw it there, which also happened to be a Bandcamp Friday. So win-win-win all around.

Standout track: “Hare tarot lies”

*Quite possibly my favourite indie label of the moment.

Categories
Tunes

Best tunes of 2013: #24 Steve Mason “Oh my Lord”

<< #25    |    #23 >>

My maxim for a number of years now has been “So much music, so little time.” As focused as I’ve been over the last couple of decades on keeping on top of the best music available, rather than settling in on the heap of proven music already in my collection, I often find myself behind and missing out on some great releases. Just as an example, I have a running playlist for which I post a part every quarter year, that includes songs from some of my favourite releases for those three months, but inevitably I discover a song or album or EP after the fact that I could have easily included.

Steve Mason’s brilliant sophomore solo album, “Monkey minds in the devil’s time”, was one of those albums that I originally missed out on when it was originally released in March 2013. I came upon it months later, kicked myself after listening to it and catching interest mere moments after the spoken word intro faded into the reverberating and haunting “Lie awake”. And even now, I often lose sight of how compelling of a listen it is, until I come around to it again. Thank goodness I have these lists that I create that force me to go back and revisit all the music I’ve loved over the years.

…But I am digressing…

In the decade that passed after Steve Mason abdicated his post as frontman of indie buzz group, The Beta Band, he suffered bouts of poverty and depression, released a variety of material under multiple pseudonyms, and most importantly, seemingly rediscovered his joy for writing new music. And thank goodness for such small mercies. “Oh my lord”, the first proper single off of “Monkey minds in the devil’s time”, appeals to my penchant and weakness for a good groove. The piano lays a jaunty riff and the drum beat jives easily with the laid back bass line while Mason leaves it all laid bare, a soulful turn on vocals. It just bleeds old-school psychedelic blues rock, à la Primal Scream’s “Give out but don’t give up”, but with more sincerity.

For the rest of the Best tunes of 2013 list, click here.

Categories
Tunes

Best tunes of 2013: #25 Cayucas “A summer thing”

<< #26    |    #24 >>

Tomorrow is the last day of August. And although, technically, there’s still three more weeks left of the season, the passing from August into September always feels like summer is coming to an end. This is why the timing is perfect for this song to pop up and for me to share this very post. “A summer thing” by Cayucas was a great summer song back in 2013 but it could also be perfect for every summer since.

“The summer’s starting to drift away but you don’t want to let go.
Now you’re watching the rainfall by yourself from your bedroom window.
And I’ll be checking the mailbox for the postcards you said you’d send,
Telling me that you might stop by in the winter for the weekend.”

Zach Yudlin was originally making music by himself in the early 2010s under the moniker Oregon Bike Trails. By 2012, though, he had enlisted his twin brother Ben to the project, changing its name to Cayucas, and then, they signed to Secret Canadian Records. They’ve release four albums in all, the latter two were self-released but the only one I am really all that familiar with is the debut, 2013’s “Bigfoot”. It’s 9 tracks and just a smidge over 30 minutes of sunshine and surf and nostalgia for California, where of course, the brothers call home.

The real gem of the album is track four. “A summer thing” sounds unabashedly like The Beach Boys. Harmonies and yellow light filtered through a kaleidoscope and a music box playing “Sloop John B” on repeat. A bopping bass line and zipper-like guitars and ticky tacky drums. Even the most jaded of music fans or Beach Boys purists couldn’t hate this song. It’s faithful in its blue-eyed wonder and wistfully drenched in memories. It’s a song you just want to restart before it comes to an end because maybe, just maybe, it might delay that cold weather just a little bit longer.

For the rest of the Best tunes of 2013 list, click here.